There was a time when a Toyota Land Cruiser was more than an anonymous-looking luxobarge made somewhat irrelevant by the existence of Lexus. It used to be a rugged, rough-and-tumble SUV built for climbin' and haulin' and kickin' asses. Now, because the off-road gods love us, Toyota is re-releasing their mid-1980s Land Cruiser 70 as a brand new car.

If you're an American, you can be forgiven for not being familiar with the 70-Series Land Cruiser; we didn't get it. But other markets did, and it was a hardcore 4x4 that came in SUV or truck form. Heck, it's even still around in several places, and other countries.

. This re-released Land Cruiser 70 has a newer V6 engine, a five-speed manual, "30 years of improvements" to make its frame more rigid, and a revised interior that helps it meet all the modern safety requirements.

As you read this, you're probably all like "This sounds great and I want one! But what's the catch?" The catch is that it's going to be available only in Japan, where it will cost about 3.6 million yen, or roughly $35,000 U.S.

Shame it's not coming here, but I hope it spurs other automakers to do more limited re-releases of their classic truck and car models. That would make a lot of old-school enthusiasts happy, and save us from hours of trawling Craiglist to find a beater we can hopefully fix up.